Chav Scum – And Other Big Brother News
PADDY. Proddy. Big ears. Noddy.
Name calling can be so childish. So who better than children to teach the Sun’s readers a few names?
“AS SHILPA WINS BIG BROTHER, 11 KIDS ASK…What do we all have in common.”
The Sun’s cover page is peopled by 11 children, each holding a sign in front of them. But this is not all they have in common. There is more.
The “YID”, “PIKEY”, “PAKI”, “NIGGER”, “RAG HEAD,” “CHAV SCUM”, “SPIC”, “TOWEL HEAD”, “CHINKY”, “TERRORIST” AND “HALF BREED” are united under a common flag.
“WE’RE ALL BRITISH,” comes the Sun’s answer one page on. This is the Sun’s “SPECIAL RACISM ISSUE”. And we have already learned much. Who would have thought calling someone a “CHAV”, a comment on clothing style, could equate to being called a “YID” or a “PAKI”? And what of Britain’s communities of “WOP”, “SEPTIC” and “POOF”, to name but three groups?
But it is useful to know the difference between a “RAG HEAD” (a Muslim girl in a head scarf) and a “TOWELHEAD” (a Sikh boy in a turban). And there are crossover labels, as Mustafa tells us that as a “TERRORIST” he has also been called a “PAKI”.
We are all of us leaning. And right now you can imagine children at school enlarging the envelope of their cultural knowledge and calling Reiss, the “NIGGER”, a black bastard, nig-nog and Sooty. Any more names for Britain’s non-white Christian natives should be sent to the Sun.
This is all part of the drive to shine a searchlight on racism. But we are not all of us so bad. Shilpa tells the Sun that she thanks Britons for their support. The Mirror’s leader says Shilpa’s victory of Celebrity Big Brother was a “victory for a better Britain” – “Viewers voted overwhelmingly in favour of tolerance and fairness, and against bigotry and hatred.”
Hurrah for us. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Better still, reach over to someone from a different cultural background and give them pat on the back. But not too hard.
“Hooray for Shilpa,” says the Sun. “Hooray for Britain,” says the Sun. “Hooray for the Sun,” says the, er, Sun.
It’s Trevor Philips, Chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights. Alongside a picture of Shilpa, and four stills of four boys murdered by racists (Stephen Lawrence, Anthony Walker, Kriss Donald and Zahid Mubarek), Phillips speaks out.
“Racism has by no means been defeated in this country,” says the man in the know. We should not underestimate the power of the phone vote for Shilpa, but we need more phone votes if the beast of racism is to be slain.
Phillips looks at Shilpa in the Big Brother house. He sees her roll up her sleeves and “put her elegantly manicured fingers to work in the Big Brother kitchen, mucking in”.
“I don’t want to go too far,” says Phillips, “but isn’t this the kind of community spirit of which we’ve always been so proud?”
For Shilpa doing the washing up, think of the Queen Mother touring London’s East End in the Blitz, Princess Diana touching an Aids patient’s hand, Jordan sharing a sleeping bag with Peter Andre?
Such is life in today’s Britain…
Posted: 30th, January 2007 | In: Tabloids Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
